


To Have Loved and Lost

by World_of_AUs



Category: Avengers, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Reunited and It Feels So Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:47:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24955555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/World_of_AUs/pseuds/World_of_AUs
Summary: This was for a request i received on my Tumblr!“ Hey, so I have a request 😅 So, I was thinking it's after the snap, and Bucky is dusted along with others. His girlfriend, reader, was part of the half of humanity that was left and was left devastated over Bucky's "death." She drowns herself in work to try and cope, but it only really just makes things worse since everything just brings back memories of her and Bucky. Would like it to include lots of angst and pain, if that's possible and you don't mind ^.^ Thank you if you do write this!”
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Reader
Kudos: 24





	To Have Loved and Lost

You were carrying his memory like a half-forgotten wish. The day he and half the population were ripped from you was something you couldn’t bring yourself to forget. The painful memory, much like the nightmares, only vanish when you wake, and even then, that moment in time is a reoccurring picture in your mind,

_ You had been feet away from him _ _ , _ _ his back in your line of sight as you stumbled be _ _ hind him. Your ears had perked up at the sound of Steve’s  _ _ pained voice _ _ and you looked up in time to see him  _ _ stumbl _ _ e _ _ into your line of sight _ _ ,  _ _ “Where’d he go?” You heard him question, “Thor, where’d he  _ _ go _ _?” _

_ It’s merely a second after those words are leaving Steve’s lips that you hear Bucky call out for him, “Steve,” _ _ his voice didn’t sound right _ _ , and  _ _ you _ _ watch _ _ with wide eyes _ __ _ as he _ _ stumble _ _ s forward, gun falling to the floor as he  _ _ disintegrates  _ _ into  _ _ what you could only _ _ assume _ _ at the time _ _ was ashes _ _. A scream of his name tears from your lips _ _ a second later _ _ ,  _ _ “Bucky No!”  _ _ y _ _ our racing forward on shaky legs as you fall to where he once was,  _ _ tears  _ _ streaming heavily down your cheek _ _ , _ __ _ fingers dig _ _ ging _ _ into the ground. _ __ _ Through your cries you can hear  _ _ Rhodeys _ _ distressed voice, “what is this _ _ , what the hell is happening?” _

He had done it,  Thanos had actually done it.

You were going on the fifth year of “The Decimation” and the mourning had not run its course. Would it ever stop hurting? The heaviness laid heavy in your limbs as much as your mind. Things you used to find happiness in now only caused you further sorrow, deepening the pain you found yourself in daily. He should have been here to laugh with you, or at you, or just be near you, but he wasn’t. He should be making his coffee every morning in that damn expensive machine Tony had boughten, then complaining about how the taste “wasn’t the same” as he remembered it. He should be gaping at the front covers of DVDs in their once growing collection and planning what way they should be spending their day off. He should be whispering sweet “I love you’s” into the morning sun beneath the sheets with you. But most of all he should be here to hug you goodnight and kiss you good morning before the two of you have to part ways to start your day. You missed those moments the most, the simplicity of better days. It pained you to realize you never got the ending you had planned, to bring him back home to the compound, to start this new life and journey with him here, and eventually venture out on your own, just the two of you.

New York City  was now the shell of a ghost town, seemingly abandoned ; a few of the “lucky” fighting to create a new norm here and there , Steve amongst them , but everyone had a way of coping . You hadn’t been able to bring yourself to even attempt a life at a new norm if he wasn’t there by your side .  Somewhere deep in your mind though you could  hear Steve’s  words , the ones you had heard him recite one to many times, “ you  gotta move on, the world is in our hands, it’s left to us guys and we got to do something with it , otherwise  thanos should have killed us all.”

You couldn’t do it though,  you couldn’t just pretend everything was okay, that this was your new norm, there was just no way , so you worked, you searched, and you fought, but your efforts  always fell short. As busy as you tried to keep yourself , the  emptiness that you felt would always be a reminder of what you had lost.

You were tired, tired of the back and forth, tired of the unknown, tired of the what if’s that laid out in the universe, how you longed to go back to that day before this world went to shit, the day he was ripped from your arms;

_ The first rays of the warm sun had peeked through the small hut, his arms wrapped securely around you as he held you close. You were awake, but unmoving, had been for some time as you let yourself relish in this moment. _

_ “You plan on ever leaving this bed?”  _ _ comes his soft voice _ _ , lips brushing against the top of your head. _

_ Your head shook against his side as you buried yourself deeper into his embrace, “the chores can do themselves today, I’m not leaving this bed or your side anytime soon,” _

_ His chest vibrates under you as a low chuckle find  _ _ it’s _ _ way past his lips, “no one’s asking you to leave my side darlin’, you can hop on my back while I do all the work, but we need to leave this bed, or else nothing’s getting done.” _

_ “Weren’t you the one trying to coax me into  _ _ it _ _ last night” you grinned peeking your head up to meet his eyes. _

_ He’s chuckling low, a shake of his head, “how about this, stay by my side while I do the work, and once we’re  _ _ done _ _ I’ll try and coax you into this bed once more, how about it doll?” Pressing your toes into the mattress you pushed yourself up, your lips hovering just below his, “you play a hard bargain Barnes,” you grinned your lips pressing to his. _

You should have never left that bed.

A hand falls to your shoulder startling you from your reminiscent mind, “go get some rest y/n, you’re no good to me half-awake in your daydream state,” you looked up at Natasha a pained smile on your features, “I’m also no good if I'm not here helping you look, we’re close I can tell,” you murmured , though you were no closer than you were yesterday.

Natasha took a seat next to you her hand falling to your shoulder, concern written on her features, “y/n you’ve been at it for years, we haven’t discovered anything new, you need to just-”

“don’t,” you grunted, eyes slipping closed as you looked away from her, “do not tell me to let this go, to let him go!” you argued, “23 days after  Thanos snapped, we could have had him Nat, something could have been done, if we were able to do that, there has to be something else that we can do, this can’t be the end, he can’t have won”

“ No one is saying it’s the end, and no one is asking you  to  let him go , nobody is, all we want is for you to take care of yourself, y/n your working yourself to death  you’re here when I leave to bed and you’re here when I wake, you  work tirelessly , and I love you for that but  we  haven’t discovered anything new _ YOU _ haven’t discovered anything new , there is nothing for us to do right now it’s-”

“just stop Nat, I don’t need this right now, just like I don’t need Steve breathing down my neck I don’t need it from you either!” you pushed yourself from your chair not wanting to hear anymore, because to you all that was coming out of her mouth was to stop, to just stop, but you couldn’t bring yourself to do that, you couldn’t just let them go, you couldn’t let  _ him _ go. The bottom of your chair scrapes harshly against the floor as you stand, your feet carrying you away from the room. You weren’t sure where to go, because everywhere you turned, everywhere you went the littlest thing would remind you of him. 

You continued to walk the empty halls, the halls you had kept yourself from walking since you lost him, the memories had been too  painful, sleeping in the room had been too much. You had hoped that it would be only a few weeks and the pain would stop, that the nightmares would disappear, but after the first month, you just couldn’t take it anymore, thus your obsession with trying to find a way to reverse this hell began, you felt if you kept your mind and yourself busy that you might began to feel even an ounce of normalcy, and five years later, nothing had changed. The pain still lingered deep within your soul, a heavy ache in your chest. The nightmares still  plagued you on the nights you did force yourself to sleep, and nothing new had come from you. You had become a shell of your former self.

You stood outside of your  bedroom; fingers frozen mid-air hesitant to wrap around the doorknob. Giving yourself that final push your fingers meet the cool metal, the door falling open as you pushed, the cool of the darkened room hitting you. Cautious steps led you deeper into the room, the door staying open behind you. You looked around the untouched room, your eyes searching, shaky hands reached for a picture frame, a picture of the two of you, stared back at you. Without him the days had passed you by like a bad movie, you were never locked away in your mind when he was here. He was your sun, and you were his stars, drawn to one another, without him the seasons had come and gone, none of it meant anything anymore.

Your breathing hitched, knees growing weak as you slipped to the floor, not caring of the bruises that would kiss your knees. Loose shoulders shook, hands falling limp at your side, the once stifled sobs were overcome by your emotions as you broke down  entirely. It was more than just  crying; it was the kind of desolate sobbing that comes from a person drained of all hope.

Steve had never seen you so taken by your grief, tears flowing heavily from you, a part of him breaking within for you. He took careful steps towards you, his body kneeling beside you, his arm reaching for your shaking form. You turned your head to face him red-hot tears running down your face, leaving trails down the tender skin of your face.

“does it ever stop hurting?” you whispered tears gathering in your eyes.

Steve didn’t know what to tell you because from what he experienced it doesn’t, given time the pain would subside slightly, but the sorrow of what you had lost would always remain. He didn’t know what words would get through to you, so he did only what he felt Bucky would have wanted him to do, he pulled you into his arms, his back falling into the side of your bed as he held you, “I don’t want to feel this pain anymore Steve, day in and day out, it’s always there, I just want it to stop,” you cried. Steve’s heart ached in his chest fingers weaving themselves into your hair as he held your shaking form, “he wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself y/n, to work yourself to death, to close in on yourself, to shut everyone out, he wouldn’t want to see you like this,”

“I just don’t know how to stop, I miss him so much Steve,” you whispered, “it’s scary to think he took a part of me with him, to have had a love and been so happy, to only have it ripped away, I have never felt a worse feeling, the constant pain, the physical ache, the emotional drain it has left in its wake, I just want it to stop,” you murmured lip wobbling as you looked at him.

Steve took your wet face in his hands, thumbs running over your damp cheeks, “you’re not the only one that has lost someone, we have all lost, but we are going to get through this together, you don’t have to do this alone, it’s going to be hard, but I'm here for you, we are all here for you,”

“do you think we’ll get them back?”

He pulled you back into him his arms wrapping around your frame his head falling onto  yours “I have no idea, but we’re not going to give up, we’re going to get through this”

Steve didn’t leave your side till he was sure you were okay, and even  then, he made you promise you would come find him and Natasha when you were ready too. Wiping under your eyes you left your room to go back to Natasha and Steve, you were entering the room when you heard a voice “ _ Oh! Hi. Hi! Is anyone home? This is Scott Lang. We met a few years ago, at the airport? In Germany? I got really big, and I had my mask on. You wouldn't recognize me.” _

You moved forward then Steve moving with you, “is this an old message?” you looked to Natasha who stood, “it’s the front gate,”

There was finally an answer, or what you hoped was an answer, A Time Heist, as Scott had tried to explain. There was a short second where just as quick as the hope had been reignited within you it diminished, though now that there was talk of being able to fix this, it had reignited that fight within Steve, that you had not seen for  some time . It took some time but Tony had warmed up, and came around, tests had been run, and you had actually been successful with Tony’s help. With knowing the possibility of this being successful you began to plan concluding which times would be best to retrieve the stones.

The time finally came, there was only one chance, and you couldn’t mess this up if you wanted things to work. You watched as your team suited up, you would be sitting this one out, with enough  hands-on deck, you would hopefully be the one greeting them all back home. You watched them disappear before your eyes, and you had never prayed harder than you did in that moment, for their safety, this was the one chance, and you just hoped they would all make it back. Your eyes never left the platform as you stood there with baited breath, the first breath you released was when  Scott came through,  it had worked, eventually the  others came through, your hope building with each face you saw. The  others were delighted, and just like you a  new hope had sparked in all of them, it wasn’t until Barton came through falling to his knees that you found your heart breaking once more. Upon discovering that Natasha couldn’t be brought back, you had all agreed that her death would not be in vain and it hadn’t been. You had actually brought people back, but that victory was short lived as the building began to collapse around you. Your feet fell from under you, as the earth consumed you  Rhodes , rocket, and Banner slipping with you. It was utter chaos below you as you struggled to regroup unbeknownst to what lay above you, if there was anything above you. Your worry for not making it out of this only grew as you were swept away in a flood with  Rhodey and rocket. Water quickly rising, the three of you struggling to stay  afloat as  Rhodey made a call, “Mayday, mayday! Does anybody copy? We're in the lower level, it's  flooding! We're drowning! Does anybody copy? Mayday!”

Any hope you had left to actually make it out of here was  diminishing as  Rhodes spoke again, looking at the two of you, “I’ll see you two on the  other side ”

Your heart dropped to your  chest; this couldn’t be the way things ended, there had to be more than an ending like this for you. As the water drew higher you three were practically underneath, and just when all seemed lost, there was Scott Lang.

When you crashed through the surface there was renewed hope as you touched the  ground, various portals opened around the area, the others took off running, you trailing not far behind. You wanted to seek him out, to see if he was amongst the many but  you barley had a second to recover before you were running off across the field towards  Thanos army. Your fighting your way through a group of  Sakaarans , when one comes at you from the side throwing you to the ground, you’re struggling but a shot from the far right side of you has the beast falling onto you, a pained groan falling from your lips as you shove it off. You stand on shaky legs looking for the shot that saved your life only to have your heart stop in your chest, eyes watering. Your taking quick strides to him as you fall into his awaiting arms, “oh god,” you cry your arms wrapping themselves tightly around him, “I-I,” you can’t find the words as you choke back a sob.

“I’m here sweetheart, I’m here,” he murmurs into your hair pressing a kiss to the side of your head.

He pulls away from you then his eyes meeting  yours , his hands grasping at your cheeks, “your here, your actually here,” you whispered, shaky hands coming up to his face to make sure he indeed was in front of you and that life wasn’t playing some cruel joke.

Time paused for the two of you, even with the chaos going on around you, time had given you this moment, a teary chuckle was falling from his lips as they press themselves to yours, “ I'm here doll, just stay by my side this time,” he murmurs pulling away from you his gun in hand already.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere,”


End file.
